This was the third day since Yan Junze was reborn on this planet after the laboratory explosion, and he was reborn in a country called the Great Capital of Huaying.
In Tianmeng District, Shuntian City, the city was roughly equivalent to a second or third-tier city in Hua Country on Earth before Yan Junze was reborn.
Unlike other reincarnators, Yan Junze, after his rebirth, still had both parents alive, hadn't "kicked the bucket," and was so healthy that even the sellers of health supplements advertising "bring home everything with just ninety-eight" couldn't find an angle to peddle their goods.
Moreover, Yan Junze was an only child, had no sisters, so those fixated on bone-related plots could directly exit by clicking the top right corner.
The only difference was that this reborn world was filled with a great deal of nameless strangeness.
For example, at two o'clock in the morning, the door outside the living room would be knocked on punctually, sending out a pure, mechanical sound that raised goosebumps on one's skin in the still and dark night.
Another example was the strict household rule that prohibited using the bathroom after midnight. Usually around 11:50 p.m., someone would lock the bathroom door with a key.
Of course, living people can't be allowed to die from holding in their excretion, so each bedroom was equipped with a simple chamber pot.
After being reborn, the original owner's memory did not recover, and Yan Junze slowly built his understanding of this family, this world, and the unexplained strangeness that permeated everything.
It was on the second day after his rebirth, which was a Saturday, that he began to roughly understand some aspects of this world by browsing information online.
The so-called strangeness was referred to here as strangeness events.
About half a year ago, such strangeness events began emerging continuously in this world. Initially considered as isolated incidents, the strangeness events quickly spread across the globe.
Multiple websites dedicated to strangeness sprouted up like mushrooms after rain, with internet users uploading a multitude of strange photos and personal encounter videos in such volumes it was unimaginable. There were also specialized chat groups, B-station live streams, and more.
Fortunately, if a strangeness event occurred, it usually only affected a specific area. If one didn't approach that area, there generally wouldn't be any anomalies. This was akin to Yan Junze's parents forbidding him from entering the bathroom after midnight.
His father, Yan Daguo, mandated that the bathroom door be locked at 11:50 p.m. every night and only unlocked the next morning at 6:30 a.m. As for the reasons behind this, Yan Daguo kept his lips sealed.
But there were always exceptions to rules, and seeing that Yan Junze had just been reborn and hadn't fully formed an understanding of this aspect, coupled with not being quite accustomed to his new body, he only realized after washing up and returning to his bedroom on this Saturday night that his glasses were left on the bathroom vanity.
This body belonged to a high school senior, straining day and night over revisions and exercises, resulting in over three hundred degrees of myopia, but other bodily functions were still fairly decent.
Just endure this one year, and after lying dead through the college entrance exam, one would once again be a robust man. The original owner's ideas were somewhat naïve and laughable.
Yan Junze deliberately checked the time; the clock had already pointed to 11:54 p.m. Now, retrieving his glasses wouldn't take a minute, and he wouldn't be breaking his father Yan Daguo's rule.
Besides, he hadn't developed a profound realization of the severity of entering the bathroom.
Strangeness events? Would a mouthwash cup jumping up to catch water by itself, a faucet oozing blood, a terrifying face appearing in the mirror, or a washcloth performing Mars Brother's "Uptown Funk" on its hook count?
Before personally experiencing it, everyone thinks that real horror is far away from them. Yan Junze subconsciously held the same belief.
Stepping out of the bedroom, squatting in the hallway to retrieve the key hiding under the bathroom door's water-absorbing carpet, Yan Junze quickly inserted the key into the lock and turned it to open the door.
The bathroom space was rather cramped, with a vanity and a toilet taking up half the area, leaving the remaining space for a shower. However, when showering, water was bound to splash onto the vanity and even the mirror in front of it.
The entire bathroom was lined with alternating red and white square tiles, except for the vanity and toilet, which were pure white.
Turning on the bathroom light, the confined space radiated a warm yellow glow, yet the overall lighting in the bathroom remained dim.
Yan Junze felt an unexplained emptiness in his heart. His blurred vision swept over various items in the bathroom; everything seemed normal. He stepped forward, grabbed his glasses from the vanity, put them on, and returned to the bathroom entrance, then reached out to turn off the light.
After putting on his glasses, Yan Junze's vision became significantly clearer. The moment he turned off the light, his eyes inadvertently scanned over something, and immediately, he shuddered violently, staring intently at the corner between the vanity and the toilet.
There, stood a disheveled little girl who had appeared out of nowhere.
The girl was about the height of a five or six-year-old, facing the corner with her back towards the bathroom door. She wore a red lace-trimmed dress, with her arms and calves exposed; however, they were covered in clusters of bruises, and her neck was skewed at a 180-degree angle to the right, although the skin had not broken.
Her little bare feet weren't wearing shoes, and her right foot seemed to be turned upwards, possibly from a severe impact.
This felt a bit like Captain Barbossa from "Pirates of the Caribbean"–at least he could stash rum in his prosthetic leg, which was downright cool. But in the case of this girl in red, it was downright horrific.
What was particularly eerie was that the girl's entire spine curved like an old tree trunk, forming an S-shape, standing there motionless, with thick, dirty, and disheveled hair draping behind her.
Right now, Yan Junze had no time to consider Captain Barbossa and his rum-storing prosthetic leg as an overwhelming sense of terror quickly rose, causing him to tremble uncontrollably. A chilly sensation spread from the bathroom toward the hallway outside.
Yan Junze felt as if his breathing had stopped.
Strangeness events, one of which was happening right before his eyes—the kind that were breaking out everywhere in this world!
Seeing news about it on TV and experiencing it firsthand were entirely different. Only now did he realize the vast chasm between them.
Cold sweat broke out on the palm of Yan Junze's hands and on his back. He wanted to close his eyes and not look at the girl in red anymore, but his gaze simply couldn't move away, still fixated on the eerie figure without blinking.
At that moment, the red-dressed girl, who had remained motionless, her twisted neck began to move, slowly turning towards the bathroom door. This was accompanied by the kaka sound of broken bones grinding against each other, like a century-old tree branch being snapped, exceedingly piercing in the quiet of the night.
In that instant, Yan Junze felt an icy chill through his limbs. Summoning courage from who knows where, his hand shot out, grabbing the bathroom doorknob and slamming the door shut with a bang, then swiftly turned the key twice in the lock before removing it, his hands trembling as he clutched it.
The bedroom of Junze's parents immediately opened, as his bleary-eyed father, Yan Daguo, and mother, Li Man, emerged.
"Ze, how long have you been reviewing? Why haven't you slept yet?" asked Li Man surprised, then glanced over at the now-closed bathroom door.
"Were you just now in the bathroom?" Daguo's sleepiness had completely vanished as he immediately returned to the bedroom to check the time on his cellphone.
Four minutes to midnight.
Yan Daguo stepped out of the bedroom again, approached the bathroom door, and tried the handle, only to find it locked. Then he looked at Junze, standing there with the key still slightly shaking in his hands.
Taking the key from Junze's hand, Daguo turned to Li Man with a stern tone, "I told you to keep good care of the keys, to not leave them lying around for convenience's sake."
Li Man, having read the unspoken message in Junze's unsteady expression, simply nodded. At this moment, Daguo was fired up, and she did not engage.
Daguo turned back to look at Junze's eyes, his gaze firm but not without concern, and he asked, "Did you see her?"
Junze did not answer.
"It's okay, as long as you don't go into the bathroom during the time she appears, nothing will happen," Daguo said, trying to reassure him.
"Dad, that thing doesn't just appear at midnight," Junze spoke up.
"That's why I insist on locking the bathroom door ten minutes ahead of time," Daguo replied, then turned to Li Man, "Next time, don't leave the key in front of the door. I will keep it myself, locking the door every night and opening it again the next day at the same time."
"It won't happen again," Li Man said apologetically, as she approached Junze and placed her hands on his shoulders.
"Dad, haven't we reported the strangeness in our house?" Junze couldn't help but ask.
The role of the security officer, akin to a keeper of public order similar to an ancient constable, was not really equipped to handle strangeness events.
However, with the rapid increase in the number of strangeness events, even after reporting to exorcists, it might not be possible to get immediate assistance.
In the early days of the strangeness outbreaks, Buddhist and Taoist practices were popular for a while, but people gradually realized that the various talismans, magical tools, and items meant to subdue demons and ghosts had little effect on the present-day strangeness.
Because of this, a number of overly traditional people met untimely deaths, and everyone came to realize that only exorcists could effectively deal with such matters.
The exorcists paid a hefty price to study how to eradicate strangeness. Their secretive methods, beyond the reach and understanding of the common folk, are not something ordinary people have a chance of, nor the ability to, master.
Daguo sighed, "We reported it a month ago, they said we had to wait in line, but we haven't even been queued up yet."
Junze was somewhat speechless.
Even though the world was riddled with strangeness, the usual social connections and favors likely hadn't diminished—saying they were in line might mean someone was jumping the queue through special relationships.
Waiting for an exorcist to deal with it might take an endless time. During this period, the only option was to temporarily seal off the affected area.
Fortunately, the red-dressed girl in the bathroom didn't seem to be the type looking for trouble; though her appearance might be a bit unpleasant to the viewers, she seemed as quiet as a quail. As long as one avoided the bathroom during her appearances, there shouldn't be any issues.
His father, Yan Daguo, worked as an office worker in a paper factory—a regular employee earning less than ten thousand a month.
Indeed, just over three thousand.
His mother was a cleaning lady at a cleaning company, and together with Daguo, they made a modest living, on par with each other.
For such a working-class family living in an old-style residential area with just two bedrooms, one living room, one bathroom, and a kitchen, moving out of this haunted place wasn't really an option.
Furthermore, trying to cut in line after reporting a strangeness event based on the social connections of Daguo and Li Man was completely unrealistic.
So, the situation remained at a stalemate.
It would take a rampant strangeness event impacting a wide area to put pressure on Huaying's Great Capital, compelling the exorcists to come quickly; otherwise, dealing with a seemingly docile red-dressed ghost like the one in their bathroom might mean waiting three to five months in line, an almost apologetic span for the young girl's deceitfully gentle frightfulness.
Junze returned to his bedroom, and Li Man followed to comfort him with gentle words. Daguo checked the lock on the bathroom door once more, ensured that the living room door was also securely locked, and then the couple turned off the lights and went back to their own bedroom.
However, Junze was unable to sleep. The scene he had just witnessed was the first time in his life that he had seen a strangeness with his own eyes, and that genuine sense of experiencing it firsthand continued to give him goosebumps.
Another reason he couldn't sleep was that, after seeing the little girl in red, a mysterious mental image of an atlas had inexplicably surfaced in his mind.